


Be All My Virtues Remembered (but perhaps never redeemed)

by Ambrosia



Category: The Borgias
Genre: F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambrosia/pseuds/Ambrosia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cesare thought he pulled Lucrezia down, but they were both at the very bottom to begin with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be All My Virtues Remembered (but perhaps never redeemed)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rufeepeach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/gifts).



He had a vague memory, from long ago— from before their beloved father ever changed his name from Rodrigo Borgia to Pope Alexander. Before Juan died with his blade in his gut, it had been a simple, beloved memory. Lucrezia had often danced with him or their mother at one of their father's gatherings, but this particular day he had noticed the fine line of Lucrezia's neck. 

He had thought her becoming beautiful, but at the time he had not followed that thought. He had not followed it down to where it might lead him, because there had been nothing to follow. 

It was true, when Lucrezia married Giovanni, he had been filled with a foreign possessiveness. He would not have called it possessiveness, at the time, because it hadn't been. He disliked being separated from Lucrezia for any amount of time, to say nothing of being separated potentially for the rest of their lives. 

But then Giovanni Sforza had raped his sister, so Cesare killed him. 

And he thought no more of it. 

The years after her first marriage had hardened Lucrezia, Cesare knew. He caught it, sometimes, his likeness in her reflection in the Vatican glass. It was a firmness that he saw so often in his own image that it had become second nature to him. But the more he caught it in Lucrezia, the more he regretted it. 

Regretted it, and reveled in it, this hardened sister, who snapped her teeth at the Pope of Rome. 

This hardened sister that asked him about poisons, directed at their own favored brother Juan. 

He killed Juan, it was true, but Cesare had this thought that he was simply the first one to achieve such a goal. 

"Lucrezia," he asked, standing across the room. 

They had made love on her wedding night to Alphonso, and again before Lucrezia was taken from him and made hostage, and a dozen times in between. He did not regret killing Alphonso, not for a single moment, but his first fear had been that Lucrezia would know. She would know that he suffered, not that he disappeared into the night and was found three days later in the Tibre. Not like Juan. 

Lucrezia would know. 

But Lucrezia did not move, did not stir when he called. She always came when he called. "Lucrezia," Cesare said again. 

They had both fallen so very far, the two of them, built themselves a mountain out of the brimstone in hell, but they surely could not fall further now. Only separation would make them fall further, and he was not prepared to die. He would, to follow her, but he did not want to. Not yet. 

His feet moved without him telling them so, and he shoved Alphonso's cooling corpse out of the way," Lucrezia," he hissed a third time, to touch her face that he had once embraced in passion, in his first moment of weakness that he immediately regretted and also didn't regret, not that first real kiss. She breathed, he found, and his soul settled back into his own chest instead of inhabiting hers. 

"I will never wash this blood away," his love whispered. He had seen men in worse, in piss and blood and vomit, but none had ever looked as angelic as she. Was she the Persephone to his Hades, now? Was she half the Goddess of life and wellness, and half the Queen of his domain, of his Hell?

He had never thought to kiss her as she had once kissed him. The answer to who pushed whom over the boundry had been lost, lost to sin and to virtue in what must be virtue to feel so natural. Their actions had not even occured to him in his deepest, most secretive thoughts— though when he first paused to think upon it, these thoughts were everywhere. His past lovers, his jealousy, his posessiveness, all pointed to his female counterpart, the only other soul on earth worthy of his attentions. 

"Then I must," Cesare said. If he was to be prince, then she would be his lady. Equal parts in power, in love, the Prince and Princess of this hell. With their father's blessing he would carve them out an empire that was worth her and her beauty, and his sword. If they could not have a fishing village on the coast with their children, they would have a kingdom. 

He used his hand and a cloth stolen from the physician's table, dipped in clean water and crawled to his lover's face. He did not even care for the blood. It made her cheek look all the more pale, all the more innocent. It seemed that not even the blood of her loved one could taint her, not like he was tainted, not like she had tainted him. She caused thoughts in his head saved for only the lowest circle in hell— but they would be there together, in hell. 

He would fuck all traces of taint from his sister's flesh until she only whispered his name. He would bring God rushing back. 

"You will be naked, and clean, and bloodless again," Cesare said, nibbling on Lucrezia's neck. "And Mine."


End file.
